Community based disaster risk management in Vietnam

This chapter provides the information about the status of activities of Community Based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM) in Vietnam and case studies that was the success measures on disaster management. The Natural Disaster Risk Management Project (NDRMP) adopts an innovative approach to disaster risk management in Vietnam and provides support for disaster prevention and mitigation measures at all levels of government, including at community level where vulnerability prevails. The CBDRM is one component of the NDRMP which aims at strengthening the capacity of villages and communes. It also aims at the disaster management institutions to become more responsive to the short term and longer term needs of the vulnerable communities through participatory risk assessment and identification, prioritization and implementation of risk reduction measures. The project intends to help communes implement activities that deal with natural hazards through capacity building in participatory planning and management. Safer village and commune plans that focus on long term intervention and preparedness measures were developed. The project has been building on existing community based disaster management and risk reduction models, and found empower flood prone communes to prevent and reduce the impact of disasters and secure and protect their livelihoods. The CBDRM activities directly support government efforts for sustainable development by helping reduce human, economic, and financial losses from disasters caused by nature in the target communes. In this chapter, the roles of the local communities, community facilitators, provincial level and central level were defined; this chapter also described how the CBDRM approach could be used to build the capacity of the most vulnerable populations to carry out risk mitigation measures at all levels.